The Ottawa Citizen reports on the trial of an immigration officer accused of corrupt practices. In an unusual move, the court declared a Crown witness to be "hostile". This is a very interesting turn of events. See article below:
Key Crown witness declared hostile
Trial of immigration bureaucrat resumes after hiatus
By Matthew Pearson, The Ottawa CitizenMarch 12, 2012
OTTAWA — The Crown has won permission to cross-examine its own star witness — a key player in the trial of a senior federal bureaucrat accused of taking cash and gifts in exchange for fast-tracking immigration applications — after a judge agreed his evasive answers were full of discrepancies.
Issam Dakik took the stand in the trial of former Citizenship and Immigration Canada supervisor Diane Serre, which resumed Monday after a three-week hiatus.
Serre, 41, is accused of teaming up with Dakik to take thousands of dollars from mostly Arab immigrants in exchange for speeding up their applications for student and work permits or permanent resident status.
Dakik would meet with the applicants and collect the money before contacting Serre, who would use her influence as a manager at the Catherine Street office.
She has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges, including multiple allegations of fraud against the government and breach of trust of a public official. Serre is also charged with one count of bribery.
The scheme allegedly began in January 2003 and continued until December 2004, when the pair was arrested by RCMP in an operation dubbed “Project Argon.”
Nine applicants made the illegal cash payments, which the RCMP said at the time of Serre’s arrest ranged from between $4,000 and $25,000.
Dakik, who has pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme, along with credit card fraud, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison in 2006. At the time, the man admitted he paid Serre a portion of the proceeds of the scheme.
But on Monday, Dakik was not terribly co-operative with Assistant Crown attorney Mike Boyce.
He couldn’t recall many details about his clients and the arrangements he had with them and said, after hearing a wiretapped phone conversation between himself and Serre, that he couldn’t identify the woman’s voice on the call, despite testifying earlier in the day that he’d known the woman personally for more than a decade.
Dakik, 51, also told the court that while he pleaded guilty voluntarily in 2006 to several offences related to the case, he did so without actually reading the agreed statement of facts, the specific charges against him and without fully understanding the Canadian court system.
“I came in to plead guilty and serve my time,” he said.
Although he pleaded guilty to the contrary, Dakik told the court he didn’t offer Serre money for her help, but admitted he personally accepted cash payments from his clients for his efforts, whom he believed he was helping on “humanitarian” grounds.
“In my mind, I wasn’t doing nothing wrong, I didn’t hurt no one,” he testified.
Before the 9/11 terror attacks, Dakik said the immigration system was “working fine for everyone.” But soon after, members of the Muslim community, and especially Arabs, were discriminated against, their files left languishing in the queue. “Everybody felt it,” he said.
Dakik said he began helping people in 2003, even though he had no training or experience, telling clients instead that he was working with a lawyer. But he was actually turning to Serre, a friend of Dakik’s wife, who he said would look into the cases and assign some to immigration officers.
Dakik said he didn’t deal with anyone else inside the immigration office and never sent written material to CIC identifying himself as somebody assisting people with their applications.
He didn’t charge for his services at first, but then he began learning how much people had paid lawyers and consultants and decided to do the same, accepting only cash — half upfront and half when the case was resolved.
He then told the court Serre had previously told him accepting cash in exchange for her efforts could put her job at risk, but gifts up to $200 in value were acceptable.
Dakik admitted to giving to giving Serre gifts and, after some prodding by Boyce, added he gave her cash on several occasions — not as payment for her services but rather money so she could buy herself something on the occasions when he couldn’t come up with a good idea for a gift.
Boyce offered Dakik numerous chances to review his testimony from a 2008 preliminary hearing and the agreed statement of facts to which he pleaded guilty in 2006, but the man refused again and again.
Dakik also turned down an offer made by police to read over his previous testimony before being called as a witness.
“I don’t need to read anything,” he said in court, adding the events in question were years ago and reading past testimony wouldn’t help refresh any of the details.
Hearing enough, Boyce asked Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken to declare Dakik an adverse witness, opening the door for the Crown to cross-examine him.
Boyce called Dakik’s answers “evasive” and “non-responsive to the extreme,” and noted the man often went off on tangents or answered questions with questions.
The Crown listed numerous discrepancies between what Dakik said in court Monday and what he’s previously said under oath, including whether Serre knew he was taking money from clients, whether he ever spoke to her over the phone regarding immigration cases and whether the pair ever used coded language when speaking about files on the telephone.
Aitken agreed the inconsistencies, as well as Dakik’s demeanour in court and unwillingness to refresh his memory as Boyce had offered, aptly qualified him as adverse.
The trial continues Tuesday.
mpearson@ottawacitizen.com
Showing posts with label Canada immgration corruption trial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canada immgration corruption trial. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
IMMIGRATION CORRUPTION TRIAL CONTINUES IN OTTAWA
The trial of immigration officials accused of corruption continues as reported by the Ottawa Citizen:
$300 payment smoothed the way for permanent residency, Ottawa court told
OTTAWA — After shelling out thousands of dollars to a lawyer to help her and her children gain permanent residence in Canada, Abtissam El-Zein paid a man $300 to look into her immigration file and, within weeks, got exactly what she wanted, an Ottawa court heard Monday.
El-Zein was testifying in the trial of Diane Serre, a senior Citizenship and Immigration Canada manager accused of teaming up with Issam Dakik to take money from mostly Arab immigrants in exchange for fast-tracking their applications.
The Crown alleges Dakik would meet with the applicants and collect the money before contacting Serre, who would use her influence as a supervisor in the department’s Catherine Street office.
Serre, 41, has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges, including multiple allegations of fraud against the government and breach of trust of a public official. She is also charged with one count of bribery.
Dakik, who has pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme, along with credit card fraud, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison in 2006. At the time, he admitted he paid Serre a portion of the proceeds of the scheme.
The scheme allegedly began in January 2003 and continued until December 2004, when Serre and Dakik were arrested by RCMP in an operation dubbed “Project Argon.” Nine applicants made the illegal cash payments, which the RCMP said at the time of Serre’s arrest ranged from between $4,000 and $25,000.
Through an Arabic interpreter, El-Zein told the court she came to Canada from Lebanon in 1999 with her husband and three children.
Her husband later died, and she and her children applied for refugee status to remain in Canada. The family appealed after their application was denied in 2001.
The immigration department later determined that the family would not be at risk if they returned to Lebanon and ordered them to be deported in 2004. They applied for refugee status on compassionate and humanitarian grounds and hired a lawyer to help navigate the system.
But El-Zein said she became frustrated with the lawyer’s costly efforts.
“I didn’t feel she was helping,” she said. She had paid the lawyer more than $5,000, in addition to the $1,500 application fee, and had nothing to show for it.
It was around that time that one of El-Zein’s friends gave her Dakik’s telephone number.
Their relationship was brought to life in the courtroom Monday through a dozen wiretapped telephone calls recorded between Nov. 25 and Dec. 9, 2004.
In a Nov. 25 call, El-Zein spells out her name and provides both her birthdate and immigration file number. She also outlines the details of her case and agrees to pay the man $300 in order to get a person he knows inside the immigration department to look at the file, she testified.
The next day, in a recorded call, Dakik tells El-Zein he has news about her file and arranges a time to come to her house later that evening, which is when she handed over the cash. Dakik doesn’t provide a receipt, the court heard.
Then, on Dec. 2, El-Zein receives a call from an unidentified woman who works at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Speaking to El-Zein’s son, the woman says the department will look at their file as soon as possible. “We’ll take a look and we’ll give you a call early next week,” the woman is heard saying during the short telephone call.
El-Zein could not identify the woman’s voice, but said in her dealings with the immigration department over the years, she couldn’t remember ever being called before.
Five days later, Dakik calls to say the immigration department will soon call El-Zein and ask her to come down to their Catherine Street office to get her papers. There’s another mention of payment, with Dakik pledging that he hoped the next instalment wouldn’t exceed what she’d already paid him.
On Dec. 9, the final wiretapped call played in court, El-Zein tells Dakik she’s been to immigration and has finally got her papers.
The court also heard from Mahmoud Ahmad Zbib, who came to Canada from Lebanon in 1988.
His two sisters followed him in 1999. One married a Canadian and became a permanent resident, while the other filled out the application and later hired a lawyer to follow up with the immigration department.
But her lawyer subsequently died and, fearing his sister’s file might get lost, Zbib turned to Dakik, whom he’d met socially a few times.
Zbib gave Dakik the particulars of his sister’s file because Dakik claimed to know a lawyer at Citizenship and Immigration who could help. It would cost, Zbib testified that Dakik said, but an amount was never specified.
Zbib’s sister was soon called to the Catherine Street office to pick up her permanent resident card.
Zbib told the court that about two or three months after learning Dakik had been arrested, the pair met at a Carling Avenue shawarma shop. Dakik told Zbib not to tell anyone about the help he gave the man, nor the money. “He asked me not to talk to anybody about what happened with my sister’s papers,” Zbib said.
Under cross examination, Zbib said he never suspected there was anything amiss about his dealings with Dakik.
The trial continues.
El-Zein was testifying in the trial of Diane Serre, a senior Citizenship and Immigration Canada manager accused of teaming up with Issam Dakik to take money from mostly Arab immigrants in exchange for fast-tracking their applications.
The Crown alleges Dakik would meet with the applicants and collect the money before contacting Serre, who would use her influence as a supervisor in the department’s Catherine Street office.
Serre, 41, has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges, including multiple allegations of fraud against the government and breach of trust of a public official. She is also charged with one count of bribery.
Dakik, who has pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme, along with credit card fraud, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison in 2006. At the time, he admitted he paid Serre a portion of the proceeds of the scheme.
The scheme allegedly began in January 2003 and continued until December 2004, when Serre and Dakik were arrested by RCMP in an operation dubbed “Project Argon.” Nine applicants made the illegal cash payments, which the RCMP said at the time of Serre’s arrest ranged from between $4,000 and $25,000.
Through an Arabic interpreter, El-Zein told the court she came to Canada from Lebanon in 1999 with her husband and three children.
Her husband later died, and she and her children applied for refugee status to remain in Canada. The family appealed after their application was denied in 2001.
The immigration department later determined that the family would not be at risk if they returned to Lebanon and ordered them to be deported in 2004. They applied for refugee status on compassionate and humanitarian grounds and hired a lawyer to help navigate the system.
But El-Zein said she became frustrated with the lawyer’s costly efforts.
“I didn’t feel she was helping,” she said. She had paid the lawyer more than $5,000, in addition to the $1,500 application fee, and had nothing to show for it.
It was around that time that one of El-Zein’s friends gave her Dakik’s telephone number.
Their relationship was brought to life in the courtroom Monday through a dozen wiretapped telephone calls recorded between Nov. 25 and Dec. 9, 2004.
In a Nov. 25 call, El-Zein spells out her name and provides both her birthdate and immigration file number. She also outlines the details of her case and agrees to pay the man $300 in order to get a person he knows inside the immigration department to look at the file, she testified.
The next day, in a recorded call, Dakik tells El-Zein he has news about her file and arranges a time to come to her house later that evening, which is when she handed over the cash. Dakik doesn’t provide a receipt, the court heard.
Then, on Dec. 2, El-Zein receives a call from an unidentified woman who works at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Speaking to El-Zein’s son, the woman says the department will look at their file as soon as possible. “We’ll take a look and we’ll give you a call early next week,” the woman is heard saying during the short telephone call.
El-Zein could not identify the woman’s voice, but said in her dealings with the immigration department over the years, she couldn’t remember ever being called before.
Five days later, Dakik calls to say the immigration department will soon call El-Zein and ask her to come down to their Catherine Street office to get her papers. There’s another mention of payment, with Dakik pledging that he hoped the next instalment wouldn’t exceed what she’d already paid him.
On Dec. 9, the final wiretapped call played in court, El-Zein tells Dakik she’s been to immigration and has finally got her papers.
The court also heard from Mahmoud Ahmad Zbib, who came to Canada from Lebanon in 1988.
His two sisters followed him in 1999. One married a Canadian and became a permanent resident, while the other filled out the application and later hired a lawyer to follow up with the immigration department.
But her lawyer subsequently died and, fearing his sister’s file might get lost, Zbib turned to Dakik, whom he’d met socially a few times.
Zbib gave Dakik the particulars of his sister’s file because Dakik claimed to know a lawyer at Citizenship and Immigration who could help. It would cost, Zbib testified that Dakik said, but an amount was never specified.
Zbib’s sister was soon called to the Catherine Street office to pick up her permanent resident card.
Zbib told the court that about two or three months after learning Dakik had been arrested, the pair met at a Carling Avenue shawarma shop. Dakik told Zbib not to tell anyone about the help he gave the man, nor the money. “He asked me not to talk to anybody about what happened with my sister’s papers,” Zbib said.
Under cross examination, Zbib said he never suspected there was anything amiss about his dealings with Dakik.
The trial continues.
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